Buena Vista Home Entertainment Disney–ABC Domestic Television
Okay, so here’s the deal. I have had long, going on eleven-year, relationship with Shonda Rhimes. There is much love, admiration and respect. While I skipped Private Practice, I did indulge in Scandal. For the first season, I got swept up in the white hatting of it all. But as the second season wore on, each of the characters became more and more unredeemable. I had to phase it out. Still, I caught the premiere of How To Get Away with Murder. The series STARTED with nearly every character being unredeemable.
I'm going to take a beat here and backtrack for a sec. In 1999, the world was introduced to Tony Soprano, ushering in a new dawn of antiheroes. Ever since, a myriad of antiheroes including Dexter Morgan, Walter White, Don Drapper, and Jax Teller have followed suit. They have compelling storylines and as content moves to premium channels, the flexibility to go darker and more violent is ripe for the taking. But starting with all unredeemable characters, creating worlds where every character is an antihero, feels empty and un-relatable.
This Spring, since the fallout of killing off a certain beloved Grey’s Anatomy character, Shonda's been talking a lot about what it takes to keep a good show going – obviously, she would know. Killing off characters is part of the deal. Additionally, part of the deal was Meredith falling in love and getting her happy ending. Shonda didn’t want to break that deal with a divorce storyline. And I get it, but here’s my counter, when I signed onto Grey’s, it was a balance of irreverent and funny friendships and relationships, with the struggles of accomplishing a life or death job. That no longer describes the Grey’s of today. Grey's today is heavy and sad, and the relationships are few because so many have been killed off. It’s actually hard to re-watch seasons (normally a favorite pastime) because to re-watch is to go through all the central characters that have been killed off. Characters make jokes like, 'don’t die' and two seasons later, they do just that. While antiheroes are hard to relate to, so are Shonda’s epic disasters and death tolls at the end of each season. Grey's is now a series of land minds with no escapism in sight.
I don't need rainbows and superheroes. I just want a version of reality that's skewed without being tragic. I support you, Shonda, I just gotta ask, 'where did the good go?'